MonticelloLive

After ten years of steady improvement, this year’s class of freshmen at Arkansas public colleges and universities must take more remedial courses than last year’s first-year class.

Since 1988 ACT results have been used to determine if high school graduates are academically prepared for a college education. Entering freshmen must enroll in a remedial class if they score lower than 19 in mathematics, reading or English.

Undergraduates don’t receive credit toward a college degree when they pass a remedial class, although they must buy books and pay tuition for the course. The purpose of remediation is to bring students up to the academic standards of college.

In the fall of 2007, Arkansas public colleges and universities admitted 19,716 students who took the ACT tests. Of those, 10,421, or 52.9 percent, scored below a 19 in English, reading or math and so had to take remedial classes in college. The highest possible score on the ACT is a 36.

The toughest segment of the ACT was the math section, and 45.1 percent of this year’s freshmen are taking a remedial math class.

The next toughest category was English, and 31.8 percent of freshmen must take remedial English classes. Of this year’s freshman class, 28.6 are in a remedial reading course.

More than a third of this year’s class, 37.5 percent, will take remedial classes in more than one subject.

The high remediation rates present a challenge for university and college officials, because a student who needs remedial work is less likely to graduate.

A campus can improve its rates of remediation by raising its admission standards. That is not an option for most public institutions, however, since their mission is to provide a higher education to as many people as possible. If they raised their admission standards too high, they would have fewer students and then would face the problems associated with a declining enrollment.

This school year,  2,631 students enrolled in a public college or university in Arkansas but are not seeking a degree. They may be seeking a certificate, or they may be non-traditional students who want to brush up in a particular field. Anyway, they were not required to take the ACT and are not included in calculations of remediation rates.

Remediation rates have improved over 10 years, in large part because Arkansas high schools are requiring students to take a more rigorous curriculum, which better prepares them for the academic challenges of college. This year’s remediation rate of 52.9 compares favorably to the rate of 58.7 in 1997.

High school students are improving even more impressively in math. The remedial rate has dropped more than seven percentage points, from 52.9 percent in 1997 to 45.1 percent this year.

The students who must take remedial classes this year are about evenly divided between two-year colleges and four-year universities.

Of the 10,421 students in remedial courses, 5,001 are in a four-year and 5,420 are in a two-year institution.

Even as college enrollment has expanded, the number of students needing remediation has gone down by a total of 499, or 9 percent, since 2003.

With more rigorous college preparatory curricula now being required in Arkansas high schools, education officials say they expect remediation rates to continue improving.